Bonding Time
by K8Y
Summary: What do you get when you put Meredith Grey in a room with two men, BONDING TIME!, and not the type you are expecting...
1. Icecream Crackups

**Ok. As a little bit of a prologue, this is set right after Derek and Finn are having their little testosterone-fueled battle over Meredith and she gets mad at them (and takes the ice cream, lol), an Alex/Meredith bonding time fanfic. **

Alex heard Meredith storm in. He had heard vestiges of her conversation. Apparently she was trying to do dating. Ha, thought Alex, Dating…Mer…that's…well they don't really go together. At least the official dating where you do the waiting… Alex laughed to himself remembering how exactly Meredith and Derek had met. She had done better with Finn though. As far as he knew she hadn't slept with the vet.

"Hey," Alex looked around to find Meredith in the doorway.

"You look great…" He said frankly. She laughed and came to sit next to him on the couch.

"Thanks," It was true, she had done some make-up and worked on her dirty-blonde hair, "What are we doing?"

"Nothing." Came his reply. It was true. He had just been sitting there and now Meredith was sitting there with him.

"You okay?" Came her small question, that was so loaded if you thought about it. _Who the hell is okay in this world,_ he thought, then answered his own question. _Babies…the only ones of us that aren't damaged in some way. And even they have the happy future of becoming damaged. Look at all of us for example, Izzie's a wreck, baking and lying on the bathroom floor for days, Burke got shot, you, yourself, are only just back on your feet… and O'Malley, who the hell knows what is wrong with O'Malley. Yang's all messed up over Burke, Shephard is trying to get in your pants, the other Shephard is putting them up on the board for everyone to see. Yeah we are all GREAT! So, yeah, in the face of all that okayness, I am just GREAT!_

"Yeah, everything good."

They sat in silence for a while. Alex was thinking back to his childhood, everything had supposedly been good back then too. With his drunk, abusive dad and his battered, depressed mother. He knew that O'Malley had grown-up with a loving, if somewhat annoying family. That Yang had grown-up with a loving, if not claustrophobia-inducing mother. That Izzie, despite having a mom that was obsessed about psycics, and growing up in a trailer park, had been loved by her mom. _But Meredith? _Meredith was like him…just another little kid forced to grow-up way too fast. That's why he felt like he was closest to her. That he could tell her anything. _After all, she was the first one I told about my boards, the first one that helped me study. _And he knew that if Derek Shephard chose to break her heart again, like he did when he went back to his wife; Alex would love the chance to beat the crap out of him.

"You okay, Mer?" He asked. She played with a stray curl, wrapping it around her finger, winding and unwinding.

"I'm fine." She smiled at him. Alex laughed.

"You say that so much, I never believe you when I hear it. Come on, different answer…" He teased, "What was the deal with you yelling at Shephard and the vet. They both take you out and make it a threesome?"

"ALEX! Did NOT need that visual in my head!!!" Alex chuckled, causing Meredith to start giggling and before they knew it they were rolling around on the couch, both helpless with laughter. Once they had calmed down and caught their breath, Meredith explained, "Nah, just neither of them know how to put decent date…and yes, I HAVE been on one of those!" Alex cracked up remembering his thoughts a couple minutes before, "Jackasses…" She muttered. Alex looked offended, "Not YOU, idiot! Them!" Now it was Meredith's turn to crack-up a little bit, "No but seriously, they act like it's an all-important competition between them, which I guess you could say it is…," Alex snorted, "But I mean, SERIOUSLY, if all they're gonna do is put all their focus on beating each other, then I should dump them both and send them off on a date!" She ranted.

"What happened?" _This is another reason why I keep Meredith around, just when you think life is getting boring, she adds the little bit of spice, _Alex thought to himself, chuckling.

"Derek was seeing me to the door, and guess what? Finn shows up with a freakin' tub of strawberry icecream. And he KNOWS that I LOVE strawberry icecream!" She indicted the tub of icecream sitting on the table before them, "And said it was from a patient," She continued, "Anyway, they both ended up being jackasses talking to each other, and I ended up with the icecream in here with you. Speaking of which, why aren't you out? Christina and George took Izzie with them to Joe's, why aren't you with them?"

"I dunno. I guess I just didn't feel like waking up with a hangover tommorrow."

Meredith looked at him for a long moment, so long that Alex wondered what she was seeing on his face.

"Do you…wanna finish this whole damn thing with me and wreck our blood sugars?" She finally asked holding up the icecream tantilizingly. Alex laughed.

"Sure." She smiled and got up off the couch, then held out her hand. _She looks so tiny that all that will probably do is pull her down in my lap, _he thought, but he took it and she heaved him off of the couch. _Damn, she stronger than she looks…_ he mused. She led the way into the kitchen, pulled out a drawer and two spoons and walked back to the table. Alex plopped down in an unlittered seat and looked around. The vestiges of Izzie's baking were still apparent and mess and clutter were everywhere. Meredith and Alex sat there, silently spooning icecream into their mouths. Then the doorbell rang.

**Little bit of a cliffhanger…sorry! I'll try to post the second chapter really soon. Read and Review, Please!**


	2. Unexpected Friend

**K, here is goes…you all excited to met the mystery person at the door? Lol, reviews are love :D **

Alex got up, silently offering to get the door.

"No, it's fine, Alex, I got it. But it better not be the Witnesses again…" Meredith muttered as she got up and left the kitchen to answer the door. Alex was about to sit down when one of the few photos around the house caught his eye.

"Mark?" Came Meredith's surprised question, when she found one of her boyfriends' sorta-ex bestfriend, "What are you doing here?"

"Can't I visit by favorite dirty ex-mistress, without having an ulterior motive?" Mark looked hurt.

"You had better not have come here for a booty call…" muttered Meredith, but she let him in, and led him into the kitchen, where Alex was still looking at a photo. _Oh, boy, this is gonna be seriously awkward, _thought Meredith, when she was reminded that she was in a room with two manwhores and a carton of strawberry icecream.

"Dr. Sloan!" Alex said startled.

"Karev…" replied Mark, standing in the doorway, looking slightly awkward.

"Oh come on!" exclaimed a frustrated Meredith, "You're both manwhores, you should be able to get along, or at the very least call each other by your first names!"

"Okay, um…Alex? Right?" said Mark hestitantly. Alex nodded.

"And…Mark?" asked Alex nervously. _Oh dear GOD! _ Thought Meredith, _This is SO awkward._

"Ok," she said, "You too get used to doing that…learning first names, so much harder than graduating med school! I'll be back in a minute, be nice!" She warned them and left the kitchen, in search of the bathroom and then the tequila.

"Sooo…Amazing isn't she…" commented Mark.

"Meredith?" Alex asked. When Mark nodded his head, "Yeah she is. Here look at this…" He passed Mark the photo.

"This is her?" Mark asked looking at the cute little girl with the pigtails and the smile as wide as Jupiter. Alex nodded, "She's such a cute kid…"

"Yeah, it makes you hate her parents that much more."

"Her parents?"

"Yeah, dad scrammed when she was five or six, mother was too busy with her surgerys to care about her own daughter." Mark took another look at the photo of little Meredith.

"Poor kid...her mother is Ellis Grey, right?" He asked, putting two and two together.

"Yeah…" Alex was about to continue, when Meredith walked back into the room. Mark laughed when he saw the tequila bottle in her hand, and got up and gently took it away from her.

"I think we're good, Mer…" Meredith looked puzzled at the gentle expression in his face, but let him take the bottle away from her.

"So I take it neither of you guys are going to stab each other with a scapel by the end of five minutes?" She asked half-seriously. Alex and Mark laughed.

"Nah, I don't think so…" Alex replied, "You want to get fat with us Mark?" He gestured towards the icecream.

"What type is it?"

"Strawberry," answered Meredith.

"Humm…not my favorite, but sharing it with with a two promising plastics surgeons and one favorite dirty mistress, unless you are in the club too Alex, then…sure," Mark deliberated and Alex looked gratified by the comment of being promising. Meredith got up and got him a spoon.

"Nope, sadly I have not joined that distigished club…" Alex quipped as the three of them dug in. And noticing the joke of the three of them, "Ha, Meredith, I guess you got your threesome date anyway!" Meredith turned bright red and choked on the spoonful of icecream she had been eating, whereas, Mark burst out laughing and Alex joined in.

"ALEX!!!!" protested Meredith.

"What's this about a threesome, Gray?" Mark asked the still bright red woman.

"Just Alex being a pervert…" She replied, shooting Alex a glare.

"Ok, Alex, what happened?"

"She dating. Both a vet and Derek…so, inevitably the threesome concept came up."

"Ha, you're dating a vet Mer?" Mark teased, "And I thought you had it bad when you were dating just Derek, but dating him AND a VET! You are a dating deiviant!"

"Haha, very funny…" said Meredith drily, "And you two call yourselves my friends…"

"We do…" agreed Alex, "You're friends with manwhores, as you put it, get used to it…"

Meredith sighed and the three of them sat in silence for a moment. Then Alex started laughing.

"Dating deviant…" He muttered between trying to get air.

"Pervert!" exclaimed Mark, joining in on the riotous laughter.

"Threesome…" murmered Meredith, joining in with hystrical laughter. All three of them collapsed trying to catch their breathes, but as in with all instances where friends burst out laughing together, their laughing feeded off of each others and they found it physically impossible until it started to really hurt their bodys.

"Ok," huffed Mark still trying to catch his breath, "I think I just did my abs workout for the week…"

"Alrighty…" smiled Meredith, happy to feel so at ease, feeling for the moment like she didn't have a care in the world. _I miss this feeling_, thought Meredith, _when was the last time it was like this? _She honestly couldn't remember.

"Come on, you two, stop being weaklings and help me finish the melting strawberry mess…" Alex chuckled.

"We should do this more often…" said Meredith, "Why didn't we ever do this before?"

"Maybe, because I wasn't in town…" Mark smiled.

"Right, why ARE you here? I mean, I love that you're here in my kitchen eating my icecream, but…" She trailed off.

"Yeah, last time Derek punched me in the face for even talking to you, even though he was SUPPOSEDLY trying to make it work with Addie. Speaking of which, what happened there?"

"You first, I asked first," demanded Meredith.

"Fine. Addison called me for essentially a booty call," Mark laughed at Meredith and Alex and the expressions of shock and awe on their faces, "After that was over…I flew back to New York and sold the practice, and sublet the apartment,…and put everything in storage," he mentioned as an afterthought and muttered to them, "Remind me to send for that stuff, ok, Grey?"

"Sure."

"And Derek doesn't seem to like me anymore and Addie was…well," he continued after an awkward pause, "Can't I just drop by to see the one person that didn't mind me being here last time?" He asked giving her the McSteamy smile. Meredith laughed.

"Of course you can," She smiled warmly, "And now you have a second person glad to have you here, if only for his career, you're probably the only person that could get him off continual gyne squad…"

"What did you do, man," Mark grimaced and chuckled, "to piss Addie off that much?"

"Nevermind…" Alex cringed, "But I'm begging you, save me, I'm getting drowned in gyne over here!"

"I'll see what I can do Alex, but no promises, ok?"


	3. Heart to Heart

**Thank you guys SO much for reviewing. This is only my second fanfiction, so the support is amazing :D**

Mark looked at the two people he had never thought that he would become friends with. _Two interns_, he thought, _who would have thought_…

"I'd appreciate it, man. No offence to Dr. Montegomery-Shephard, but GYNE! Seriously!" Alex protested.

"Oh, so gyne is just for women? Huh?" teased Meredith.

"Yeah- oh, no, I meant…No!" Alex stuttered and Mark laughed at him.

"Nice job man, you're a real ladykiller…" Mark mocked.

"Haha, you are a very funny guy, Sloan!" Alex retorted.

"Sloan! Ouch, man, that hurts right here, Karev!" Mark pretended to act hurt, pointing at his chest.

"Ok, boys, careful or I'll put you in a time-out…" warned a laughing Meredith.

"Oh, I'm scared…" muttered Alex, getting glare from Meredith.

"Well," started Mark, "If im going into time-out, you can at least come keep me comfortable…" Meredith gave him the glare, as he gave her the patented McSteamy grin.

"Mark!"

"Ok, sorry…just were would the time-out be? In your bedroom?" He grinned wider.

"Alrighty, I think that's my cue to leave, huh Sloan?" Sloan nodded laughing, "Anyway, I've got to be on-call tomorrow night, so I need some sleep. See you tommorrow, Mer," Alex got up, put his spoon in the sink and kissed Meredith on the top of the head, "Thanks for the icecream therapy. See you tommorrow at work, Mark?"

"Yeah, I'll be there. Should be interesting to see Derek's reaction…"

"Well, I'd hate to miss that…later than man," They bumped fists and then Mark heard Alex get his jacket and open the door, close the door, and leave.

"Ok, if we are going to be friends, there are going to be some rules…"

"There are rules to the dirty mistresses club? Seriously?"

"NUMBER ONE AND ONLY…no friends with benefits. You may be a manwhore, and Derek might have called me a whore, but we are not getting into some twisted acuputure table sex pact, whenever we need some…"

"Derek called you a whore?" Mark asked shocked. _What has happened to him, he would NEVER call someone that. Especially Meredith._

"Yeah, when I moved on, or sort of, and started dating Finn, the vet, a few weeks ago," Meredith cringed at the memory.

"Sorry Mer…"

"It's ok, I was acting like it for a while. I did a lot of one-night stands after Derek went back to her."

"Mer, don't hate me for this, but…he's not good for you. If he can make you so messed up that you need to go out and have a lot of one-night stands, then gets mad at you for them and that you have moved on, it's not healthy!" Mark's speech made her look at him, letting her feeling and face be unguarded for the first time in a while, and Mark caught a glimpse of the pain that she had been through and recognized it as like his own.

"Then, why do you do it?" Came her question, sounding like a five year-old asking her parents why they were allowed to do something and she wasn't.

"For the same reason… because Addie left me for her husband. We aren't so different after all..."

"Is that a quote from your 400 dollar-an-hour shrink?" Meredith quipped, then turned serious again, "You really love her don't you?"

"I don't even really know anymore…"

"So if you don't know, why did you come out here?"

"I wanted to see if things could work with Addie, or that I could at least get Derek to forgive me. But he doesn't forgive easily. He's amazing at holding grudges…"

"Yeah, I'm not sure I even know anymore…"

"You've been through a lot. And not just with Derek," said Mark gently.

"How do you know?"

"When you left to get the tequila, Alex had found a picture of you…" he passed her the photo and saw her eyes fill with tears as she saw the picture of her broken family, "And told me a bit about your childhood. I hope you at least ignore your mother now." Meredith shook her head.

"No, she has Alziemer's, as you would have found out from the gossip mill sometime soon…I'm the only one, other than the Chief that visits her. She wouldn't recognize anyone else," Mark took another look at the amazingly strong woman before him.

"Man, that's rough. Let me know if I can ever just take you out for drinks and drive you home so that you can get good and hammered, or if you just need a human punching bag, ok?"

"Thanks," muttered Meredith wiping away the tears, "I'll keep that in mind…though I've been told I have 'tiny, ineffectual fists'…" Mark laughed and put an arm around her shoulders.

"All the better for me than…"

"Yeah, be thankful…" Meredith smiled.

"Yeah, you know, I had a pretty bad childhood too. My parents were always gone. My dad was always working, eventually died of a heart attack because he worked too hard…" Meredith turned towards him and put a hand on his shoulder, "It's okay, the bastard got what he deserved. I didn't even know him, really. And my mom. Fancy dinners, golf tourdement, cocktail party after social gathering. She slept with every man that she meet at them. Sort of explains why my dad spent all of his time at work…" Meredith looked at him with a gentle, concerned look.

"That sucks…"

"Yeah, it does…"

"But I've got you one-upped. My dad hated me so much that he left, never called or wrote, and started a whole new family within about a year…"

"I don't think you get the trophy in 'who's childhood sucks the most' yet…"

"Then my mom's boyfriend refused to leave his wife after my parents split. She ran away to Boston."

"Let's call it a tie…"

"Ha, ok…I can deal with that."

They sat in silence with the now-empty icecream container.

"You wanna watch a movie?"

"Sure."

Meredith and Mark got up, put the spoons in the sink and the container in the trash.

"What movie?"

"What movies do you have?"

**Okay, I know Alex, Meredith, and Mark seem a little Out of Character, but I've always imagined that with Alex, Meredith, and Mark that they are the most sensitive people once you get them to open up, and since they have similar experiances, that they could open up fully to each other. Anyway, please review :D**


	4. Movie Fantasy

**Okay. This fic has been annoying me for a while. I HATE having loose ends, so I'm finishing it best I can. I haven't watched Grey's in a while though, so they might be a little OC. Sorry! I got a little frustrated with the storyline that Grey's was taking, and after they added the Mercy doctors, I was annoyed enough to kick my TV. I didn't though so that's good…lol. In addition I had major writer's block for this story…I have NO idea where it's going…so I figure, if anyone's still reading this, and I don't blame you if you're not, you are more than welcome to adopt it and continue ****That being said:**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Grey's…lets just say things would be VERY different (the finale had chops though, I'll admit that)**

"This movies ridiculous…" laughed Mark, "Almost the ENTIRE cast dies within the first 20 minutes…"

"Shut up!"

"You only like it because you think Tom Cruise is hot!" he retorted. Meredith scooped up a fistful of popcorn and threw it at him.

"I do not!" Mark chuckled.

"Oh…so that's how you want it to be huh?" He lunged towards Meredith, catching her around the waist. She shrieked and squirmed, and Mark's face lit up with delight.

"So Grey's ticklish huh? Well you know what that means…"

"No no no no no…" Meredith whimpered through her giggles as Mark tickled her lightly, "Stop please, stop stop stop.."

"Not until you admit you have fantasies about Tom Cruise," He smirked. Meredith set her jaw resolutely, but lasted a pitiful few seconds before she was crying:

"Fine! Fine! I have fantasies about Tom Cruise! Now stop!" Mark immediately stopped and sat back on the couch with a angelic smile, that told Meredith that he would never let her forget it. She turned her attention back to the movie, but momentarily turned and death-glared at Mark.

"You made me miss the best part!"

"Aww…sorry Grey if I made you miss your hot-and-bothered part, but hey, that what I'm here for…" He laughed as she turned rigidly back to watching the movie, resolutely ignoring him.

**Alright, there you go ****Hope you got a laugh or two from that! If anyone chooses to adopt this story, let me know! I'd love to see where you go with it! Love, KT**


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